December's Perfect Party: Everybody-Is-Comin'-To-Town Edition

Your family members aren't the only ones visiting during the holidays.

It’s a rule here at Perfect Party HQ: When Joe Biden comes to town, as he will December 7 when he visits the Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land as part of his American Promise tour, he always has a seat at our table, and not just because of the memes (fine, because of the memes). We’ll put him next to Reza Aslan, the Iranian American scholar whose show, Believer, was dropped by CNN last summer, after he called President Trump a piece of, well, you-know-what. Biden, we know, will have the grace to avoid that undoubtedly sore subject and instead ask Aslan about his new book, God, which he’ll read from December 6 at the Ballroom at Bayou Place. Then comesHanadi Rifai, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UH, who’s examining how Hurricane Harvey contaminated Houston’s waterways as part of a National Science Foundation study. We think she’ll enjoy chatting with Brian Louden of Spring, who was named the new co-host, with Jon Lung, of the Science Channel’s MythBusters—back on the air as of last month—having won the spot competing against a group of hopefuls on MythBusters: The Search.

Next comes Ebony Smith, a shoo-in after she was awarded the homecoming queen crown at North Shore Senior High School and Galena Park ISD did a bad Photoshop job on her dress-code-violating purple hair—a move that, in the eyes of many, was a much worse violation. And finally, Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, is going in the hot seat (we’d invite his cohort Adam Ozimek, too, but alas, it’s a six-person table). Zandi and Ozimek ranked Houston 49th out of 65 cities that could potentially attract Amazon’s new headquarters, while assigning Austin the No. 1 position, using something they call “data.” Hmm.